Chapter Eighteen
Later that morning, hours after the riders departed again toward the eastern ridges, Avery carried her snares looped over one arm and headed deeper into the forest with Charlie trotting ahead through the undergrowth.
The woods had grown quieter immediately after the army’s departure, though not truly silent anymore.
A smaller contingent always remained behind now: guards, wounded men, several cooks, and boys tending horses.
At first Avery did not realize she was being followed.
Donnchadh moved far more quietly than most men. She only noticed him after Charlie glanced back once toward the trees behind them with the mild acknowledgment of a creature already aware of another presence nearby.
Avery straightened from where she had been examining a disturbed snare line near a cluster of brush and turned fully at last.
Donnchadh stood perhaps twenty feet away beside a pine trunk, broad-shouldered and entirely unapologetic at being discovered.
“Why are you following me?” she asked.
“Laird tasked me with keeping ye safe.”
His tone suggested this should explain everything.
“I am safe.” She gestured vaguely around them at the forest itself. “Donnchadh, I’ve lived here by myself for years.”
“Aye.” He pushed away from the tree and walked toward her, no need to keep his distance now.
“Wouldn’t you rather be with the others?” she pressed. “Fighting with them?”
Something flickered briefly across his face then.
Not embarrassment precisely, but acknowledgment.
Of course he would rather ride with the others.
She’d heard Alastair yesterday in passing, say something to the effect of, every man in camp knew the larger forays against the English offered greater danger, greater glory, and infinitely better stories afterward beside the cookfires.
Still, Donnchadh merely shrugged one heavy shoulder.
“Laird asked for me, lass.”
Avery frowned faintly at him.
“?Tis a high honor,” he continued simply, “to protect what he values.”
The words landed heavily, and for a moment she could only stare at him.
Yes, she knew by now that Morggán liked her.
Possibly cared for her in some deeper way neither of them had yet fully named aloud, and that hadn’t anything to do with what he thought he owed her.
But Donnchadh spoke of it with such calm certainty that it made whatever existed between herself and Morggán suddenly seem larger and more visible than she had allowed herself to believe.
More visible not merely to her, but apparently to others as well.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, either people knowing or people assuming things about her.
Donnchadh watched the understanding cross her face and, to her astonishment, broke into a rare grin.
“Ye really have been isolated too long, lass.”
The bluntness of it—the fact of the mostly silent Donnchadh speaking so familiarly with her—surprised her yet more.
“Honest to God, Donnchadh,” she admitted, lowering her gaze toward the snare in her hands, “every day I feel more like I’ve been living under a rock for ten years. I simply don’t know this world anymore.” Or at all. Good Lord, and wasn’t that the truth!
Donnchadh’s expression eased somewhat at the admission.
Unlike Lucas, whose attention often made her feel examined, or Tormod, whose watchfulness carried the weight of long military experience, Donnchadh possessed a steadier simplicity she found increasingly easy to tolerate.
He treated her neither as fragile nor strange, merely as someone presently under Morggán’s protection and therefore under his as well.
“Well,” Avery said after another moment, looping the repaired snare over her arm again, “you can’t follow me all day.”
“Laird says I will.”
“I want to take a bath.”
That gave him pause at least.
“As ye may, lass.” His tone remained perfectly matter-of-fact. “Tell me where and I’ll survey the area ere ye bathe. I’ll keep my distance while ye’re at it.”
Avery opened her mouth to argue against this plan, but closed it almost as quickly, having some sense that she wouldn’t sway the stoic Donnchadh from his duties.
“Best done now before the riders return,” he added practically. “The forest will grow crowded again near dusk.”
The loch was not large and sat deep inside the forest, almost near that place where she’d found Morggán’s horse.
It fed the stream that was closest to her house and continued on well south, though she’d never followed its path outside the forest. In the early spring and late fall when the water was almost too cold, she sped through her bath, but generally at this time of year, she could withstand the loch’s temperature and might enjoy some leisure time in the water.
Today, however, knowing Donnchadh waited—she didn’t for one minute fear he would be watching, sneaking peeks at her—she was compelled to wash, dry, and dress with more haste.
With her hair still wet, soaking the shoulders and back of her fresh shirt, she put on her short boots and made her way through the thick brush that flanked the pond.
She was surprised to find Eòin fairly close, leaning against a tree, looking as if he was waiting on her. He straightened as soon as he saw her.
“How many people are involved in...this?” she asked, transferring her dirty clothes and her damp towel to her other arm.
“This?”
“Apparently, I need a personal guard now whenever I leave the house.”
Eòin shrugged, looking mildly embarrassed. “Orders, lass. Donnchadh wanted someone watching east and west—he’s out yonder.”
At that, he put his thumb and middle finger into his mouth and gave a sharp whistle. A moment later, another whistle sounded from across the loch. Aside from what she supposed was Donnchadh’s answering whistle, the noise also brought Charlie bounding through the brush toward her.
Avery resisted giving Eòin any more grief, but smiled briefly at the kid and started back to her house.
“How ye getting on, lass?” Eòin asked as he fell into step beside her.
He didn’t keep distance the way Donnchadh did, but she didn’t mind.
“With...what?” she wondered.
“Er, the armies near suffocating ye,” he clarified.
“Oh.” That. “I guess I’m getting used to it,” was all she could think to say, which happened to be closest to the truth.
“Maybe knowing it’s not forever allows me to accept it.
” She regretted the words almost as soon as they were said, hearing how it sounded.
“Not that you and well, everyone except Kerr, I guess, aren’t very nice, but I prefer the quiet. ”
“Kerr willna disturb ye, lass,” Eòin informed her, almost gleefully. “Tormod made sure of it.”
She was almost afraid to ask, but really wanted to know: “Why? What happened to Kerr?” How severe was military punishment in this century?
“Reduced to baggage handling,” Eòin replied. “He's with the horses and supply wagons now. Lost his sword besides. Carries naught but a dagger.”
Avery turned to him as they walked through the forest. “That was his punishment?”
It seemed strangely out of proportion to the fury she’d seen in Morggán that afternoon. She wasn't wishing anything worse upon Kerr, but she had expected... something more.
Eòin looked at her in open surprise. “Lass, ?tis the greatest humiliation a fighting man can suffer. A warrior without his sword is nae a warrior at all. While the rest of us ride with honor behind the laird, Kerr loads wagons, curries horses, and keeps count of sacks of grain. He’ll nae soon forget the lesson. ”
Avery glanced out over the forest ahead of them. She couldn't imagine feeling ashamed to do honest work, but perhaps that wasn’t the point. Apparently, the shame lay in everyone knowing he’d been judged unworthy to stand beside his companions.
Even before the house came into view, they knew that the armies had returned. Closer to the house, though within the dense forest were scattered hundreds of tents, and now horses and men streamed between them.
“?Tis nae guid,” Eòin commented, pausing for a moment to study the mounted men moving through the trees. “Too soon to be returned,” he added as further explanation.
It was earlier than normal, but Avery possibly wouldn’t have thought anything of it if Eòin hadn’t expressed concern.
“Come.” He caught her free hand and quickened his pace toward the house.
She went along, more curious about what concerned him than annoyed by his manhandling.
The clearing immediately around the house was chaos. Avery gasped, as it seemed every other man was wounded.
One rider leaned heavily across his saddle while another pressed a blood-soaked cloth against the side of his neck.
Beyond them, a man lay face down across his horse, supported only because another rider stayed close, his hand on the man’s back to keep him from slipping to the ground.
Others dismounted stiffly, sleeves slashed open and stained dark with blood, one soldier cradling an arm that hung unnaturally from his shoulder while another limped badly enough that two other soldiers bore nearly all his weight.
Avery's pulse sped up. Her eyes swept through the confusion, searching almost instinctively for the handful of faces that had become familiar.
She found Morggán first, striding across the clearing with the same purposeful gait as ever, issuing orders to the men around him.
Tormod stood not far away, calling for Muir, whom she understood was the army’s doctor.
Finlay was helping ease a rider from his horse, and Alasdair, though very much on his feet, had one hand wrapped in a bloodstained strip of linen.
Only after she had found each of them standing and moving under their own strength did a bit of relief come.
So this was real, she found herself thinking once again. Every detail before her looked impossibly, unmistakably... medieval.